Businesspeople about 2011 Easter: a little better than in 2010

Ziarul Financiar 25.04.2011

For a 50-sqm sweet shop in a town, Easter and Christmas bring half of annual profit. For large shopping centres, Easter and Christmas mean 20-30% added to total turnover. This is the period when business owners spend their entire time in stores and restaurants and people do not think twice before taking money out of their pockets.

The first signs about this year's Easter are mixed: alcoholic beverages, wine and egg consumption is a little better or flat from 2010, some Bucharest restaurants say they are 20% below last year's level, but more Romanians went abroad on a mini-holiday.

Approximately 100,000 Romanians set off on the Easter mini-holiday this year, 30% more than last year. Around a fifth of Romanian tourists preferred spending Easter in Bulgaria or Greece.

Around 20,000 Romanians went abroad on Easter, up from 15,000 last year, in line with estimates by Traian Bădulescu, a travel consultant.

The 80,000 Romanian tourists who spent their Easter holidays in Romanian pensions or hotels paid around 10m euros for travel packages, according to ZF's calculations taking into account an average price of 120 euros/package.

The Romanians who chose Bulgaria, Greece, Israel or European capital cities spent around 3m euros, according to ZF calculations taking into account an average cost of 150 euros/holiday.

Romanians who did not go on an Easter holiday preferred spending their time at home, a tendency felt by Bucharest restaurants, which had one fifth fewer clients last weekend.

Romanians bought 80 million eggs during this period, according to ZF's calculations taking into account an average consumption of ten eggs per each Romanian family.

Daniel Negrescu, a brand manager with Murfatlar, one of the biggest domestic wine producers, says he felt the company's sales were better last week than last year. At market level, sales are also expected to have improved considering Easter came earlier last year.